Nutrition plays a critical role in maintaining good health. Proper nutrition prevents dietary deficiencies, and also protects against the development of disease. Proper nutrition plays an increasingly important role as the body faces physiological stress. For example, as the body ages it suffers significant physiological stresses. Specifically, as the body metabolism shifts to accumulating larger fat stores and decreasing lean body mass, this increase in body weight may lead to obesity and associated conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, osteoarthritis, and cancer. Other conditions, such as anorexia, malnutrition, gastrointestinal disorders, chronic alcoholism, chronic infections, acute infections, congestive heart failure, hyperthyroidism, poorly controlled diabetes, cheilosis, gingivitis, stomatitis and dietary restrictions, often result in physiological stresses that may be exacerbated by poor nutrition. In particular, these disease states may result in increased oxidative stress or elevated homocysteine levels that further compromise health.
Thus, nutritional supplementation serves a vital role in protecting against poor nutrition and disease. More specifically, nutritional supplementation may provide the necessary vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients that might otherwise be lacking in the diet, and provide the nutritional defense against disease development. The invention herein provides for compositions and methods, specifically using an iron-free multi-vitamin/mineral/antioxidant formulation, designed to optimize health and wellness, minimize oxidative stress, and normalize homocysteine levels.